"We're steady, boys, steady,
But always unready;
We've just let the French get before us again."
The American War of Secession; the throne of Greece put up to auction; Poland in chains, defying the Russian Bear; the ghost of Charles I. warning the King of Prussia, by the block to which he points, of the punishment that awaits the would-be despot; Napoleon crushing the prostrate figure of France; the wars between "father-in-law Denmark," Germany, and Austria, and between the latter two (as Robbers in the Wood); Reform; Irish Church Disestablishment; "Dizzy" as the Premier-Peri entering the gates of Paradise, or, bound to the Ixion's wheel of "Minority," hurled forth by Hercules-Bright, with the severe approval of Juno-Britannia and Jupiter-Gladstone; the Franco-Prussian War; the Royal marriages; the occupation of Egypt; and the creation of the "Empress of India;"—all the subject-matter, indeed, of home and foreign politics, and of general public interest, have been touched upon by Punch as they occurred, lightly, but often probed à fond. His attitude seldom caused much surprise, for his opinions and views could generally be foretold. It was the manner in which they were put forth that carried weight and influence; they were the nation's ideas
"... to advantage dressed,
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed."
The student of the times, if he would know how public affairs struck the public mind during that period, can assuredly find no truer, no more accurate indication than is offered by the perusal of Punch's pages.
[Contents]CHAPTER V.
"CHARIVARIETIES."
Punch's Influence on Dress and Fashion—His Records—As a Prophet—As an Artist—As an Actor and Dramatist—Benefit Performances—Guild of Literature and Art.
The man who glances at Punch's current number and throws it aside can have but little appreciation of the influence of the paper, not only in matters political, but in social subjects of every kind. That the Baron de Book-Worms can make or mar the success of a new book, as completely as the "Times," "Athenæum," or "Spectator," has been testified to by Mr. Hall Caine and others; and in some quarters at least Punch's bâton-strokes are as effective as ever, and recall the times when he could, and did, drive a semi-public man into obscurity, which, but for the fame of his onslaught, would have been absolute oblivion.
But it is in dress, in fashion, and in manners that Punch has gained, if anything, in weight and influence. In such subjects, treated as "charivarieties," as Mr. Arthur Sykes has called them, he has always been supreme, and fulfils an unquestioned destiny. John Leech determined that there should be no Bloomerism in the land, and there was none—only, by the charm of his drawings, he came very near making it popular, and converting British young womanhood to Turkish trousers. Mr. du Maurier thought that it would look pretty if every little lady in the land were to wear black stockings; and every little lady did: as unfalteringly as when Miss Kate Greenaway imposed upon them smocks and poke-bonnets, or when Mrs. Hodgson Burnett clad mothers' darlings in black velvet Fauntleroy suits, with bright-coloured sashes wound round their middles. As the volumes are examined, the reader becomes aware of the enduring value of Punch as a History of Costume in the Victorian Era. Even men's dress is noted with minute truthfulness—the violently variegated shirts of 1845; the Joinville ties, with their great fringed ends, out of which Thackeray made such capital in 1847; the pin-less cravats and cutaway coats of 1848; the ivory-handled canes of 1850, for sucking purposes—the fashion which came round thirty years later with the advance of the "crutch and toothpick brigade;" the big bows and short sticks of 1852; the frock-coats and weeping whiskers of 1853, with the corresponding inability to pronounce the "r" otherwise than as a "w," or to converse but with a languid, used-up drawl; the smaller ties and growing collars, when a wasting youth complains that "She is lost to him for ever" (she, the laundress!); the schoolboy's Spanish hat of 1860, that was soon developed into the "pork-pie," and was to be adopted generally for country wear with baggy knickerbockers; the full-blown Dundreary of 1861, with long weeping whiskers, long coat, long drawl, and short wits; with the sudden change for the better in the following year. All this is to be found clearly recorded year by year, season by season, with all the peculiarities of "form;" of umbrella and umbrella-carrying; of dancing, energetic and invertebrate; of handshaking, sensible and high-level (which was invented, of course, by the ballroom girl who was holding up her train in the dance); of hirsute adornment and æsthetic craze—every shade of fashion is followed in its true development and in its wane—down to the recent phase of 1893 and 1894, when the swell lets out his collar for an advertisement hoarding, or, safe in the perfection of its starching, marches quietly across the desert while fierce Orientals turn the edges of their swords in vain across his linen-shielded neck.